Media Sales Today

With more consumers owning HDTV sets and more stations offering programming in this rich format, advertisers should be rolling out more ads to make their products and commercials look their best. For a while, the costs and complexity to shift to HD were prohibitive. But that has changed and industry experts predict that more local and regional marketers will be making the move to the HD format.

In the past 2 years, almost half of advertisers have allocated more of their media mix to TV. Marketers indicate that this media format offers unique effectiveness. However, TV is under increasing pressure and marketers responding to a recent Association of National Advertisers survey explained how TV media space providers can increase their share of marketing dollars.

I’m sure I’m not the only consumer that is breathing a sigh of relief now that political ads are over. But there’s no denying the boost that this year’s political advertising gave to local TV advertising revenues; with the elections behind us, what can spot TV expect for the rest of the year?

It looks like broadcast advertising is making a comeback — as indicated by early commitments. Advertising Age estimates that advertisers have ponied up between $8.1 and $8.7 billion among the 5 networks. The spending is a gain from last year, and the amount of time bought increased from 2009.

After so many negative ad sales reports and doom and gloom forecasts, ad tracking service Kantar Media is reporting first quarter 2010 advertising spending was up 5.1 percent. This is the first quarter with a gain since the first quarter of 2008, and the largest increase in ad spending since first quarter 2006.

Newspapers, radio stations, TV and cable companies have always helped smaller advertisers create ads. Now there’s a trend developing with some of the biggest media companies are creating custom advertising for clients – advertising that can also be used with other media properties.

Though consumers continue to watch TV in record numbers, TV station operators are expected to end 2009 with another drop in revenues. This latest trend in lower industry revenues began in 2006 when TV stations recorded $22.8 billion in sales. The 2009 expected total revenues of $15.6 billion is a 22.4% drop from 2008. BIA/Kelsey analysts note that this level is comparable to what the industry earned in the mid-1990s.